Than Right-Wing Populism? 1

Pegida in Dresden and elsewhere – more than right-wing populism? 1 Dr. Dietrich Herrmann Under the acronym PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident), in October of 2014 a group of men began “walking” every Monday evening through the streets of Dresden. These events attracted their highest number, 25000 participants, in January of 2015. Xenophobic attitudes were clearly visible from the beginning but this could hardly have been sufficient reason for so many people being attracted. Most participants declared themselves to be ordinary people from the “centre” of the political spectrum. Beyond the undeniable anti-immigrant attitudes of many Pegida supporters, there seems to be a general challenge to the concept of representative liberal democracy of the type that has been successful in the 20 th and early 21 st centuries. What and who is Pegida? There has been considerable disagreement on minor issues regarding the composition of the Pegida activists and demonstrators. Unquestionably, the so-called Pegida “Orga-Team” (organisation team) originally consisted of twelve persons all of whom live in or around Dresden. They are linked by their common adherence to the local soccer club Dynamo Dresden and their participation in specific flood relief activities in 2013. According to research done by investigative journalists from the regional newspaper Sächsische Zeitung, the employment of members of the group included work in security, in facility management and in advertising.2 They initially started with a walk in October of 2014 through Dresden, with which they protested against what they perceived as a threat to social peace in Germany, namely foreigners bringing the conflicts from their countries of origin into Germany. During the first weeks, growing numbers of people marched silently through downtown Dresden. They refused to talk to journalists; press people were actually prevented from talking to individual participants. The press nevertheless reported. This was much to the dislike of the demonstration organisers as their backgrounds were revealed and the leading figure, Lutz Bachmann, was even shown to have a criminal record. With reports that well-known Nazi activists had joined the marches along with hooligan fans of Dynamo Dresden, finally counterdemonstrations were organised, first by churches, later by a broad alliance of collective actors such as unions, universities, colleges and research institutions, cultural institutions, museums, civil rights groups, churches, and political parties from the centre to the left. The pressure on Pegida to declare their goals and intentions mounted until they finally produced a 19-point manifesto.3The conglomerate of ring-wing, anti-Islamic, and very simple anti- 1 Article was delivered as part of the project " The Politics of Protest. Understanding political protest in Central Europe " organized by the Warsaw office of Heinrich Böll Foundation in partnership with Collegium Civitas university. The Project under the academic supervision of Mateusz Fałkowski PhD. from the Collegium Civitas examines recent protests in six Central European countries. Between March and October 2015 six expert seminar discussions examined protests taking place recently in following countries: Bosnia, Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania. Invited country experts discussed the background, causes and forms of current mobilizations. Each seminar was documented in a short "country paper", a basis of a short book summarizing our findings and proposing analytical framework. 2 „Pegida persönlich“, Sächsische Zeitung Dec. 2, 2014, p. 3. 3 1. Affirms the right of asylum for war refugees and politically persecuted people. 2. Advocates the inclusion in the German constitution of a right and duty to integration. 3. Advocates decentralised housing of refugees. 4. Suggests the creation of a central refugee agency for a fair allocation of immigrants among countries of the European Union. 1 establishment demands is completed by Pegida’s declaratory opposition to “any kind of radicalism” and against hate speech. With the demonstrations of December 15 th and December 22 nd , having again more participants, Pegida finally drew national attention. Immediately, small off-shoots of Pegida were founded in many cities in Germany, but also abroad, such as in Oslo, Norway. Despite – or perhaps because of – the fact that both President Gauck and Chancellor Merkel strongly advised Germany not to follow Pegida demonstrators, the numbers of the marches in Dresden continued to grow to a peak of about 25,000 marchers at the end of January. The local off-shoots elsewhere never reached anything close to the success Pegida had reached in Dresden, for two basic reasons: In many cities, locally well-known neo-Nazis had taken the opportunity to initiate the marches, so hardly anybody beyond the usual neo-Nazis participated. Also, however, the counter-protests were much, much stronger than in Dresden. In some places, Pegida marchers were met by ten times as many counterdemonstrators, and this quickly led to the demise of these Pegida initiatives. As much of the attention focused on the situation of refugees and foreigners in Germany, and in the state of Saxony in particular, civil society actors united within the newly founded network “Dresden für Alle” (“Dresden for all”) decided upon a twofold strategy: (a) continuing with the counterdemonstrations, (b) starting active civil society support to refugees coming to Dresden in different parts of the city alongside the official city agencies in charge of dealing with the refugees. Beyond the factual perspective, I wish to focus on a number of categories that may help the better understanding of the phenomenon and open it to comparative analysis. The trust element: Whom do we trust? The stability and legitimacy of any kind of government relies on the consent of the governed, and this requires a certain extent of trust on the part of the governed towards those who are in government, but also to those in other “elite” positions in varying spheres of society. It seems that Pegida supporters have lost any kind of trust in government, in elites, except for perhaps local actors they personally know and whom they don’t categorise as “elite”. As Pegida supporters do not seem to trust any established institutions, many of them are very open to conspiracy theories – the actors in these theories being international business, the American or Israeli military, specific elites, and the “leftists” who have (in their eyes) taken control over essential positions in the state and media administrations. Who are the actors and the institutions that explain how society and the world function ? 5. Demands a decrease in the number of asylum seekers per social worker from the current 200:1. 6. Suggests modelling German immigration policies after those of the Netherlands and Switzerland and demands an increased budget for the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees to speed up the processing of applications. 7. Demands an increase in funding for the police. 8. Demands the implementation of all asylum laws including expulsion. 9. Mentions zero tolerance towards criminal refugees and immigrants. 10. States that Pegida opposes misogynistic and violent political ideology, but does not oppose assimilated and politically moderate Muslims. 11. Supports immigration as it is in Switzerland, Canada, Australia and South Africa. 12. States that Pegida supports sexual self-determination (opposing the "early sexualisation of children"). 13. Argues for the protection of Germany's traditionally Judeo-Christian culture. 14. Supports the introduction of referenda as in Switzerland. 15. Opposes weapons exports to radical and non-permitted groups, such as the PKK. 16. Opposes parallel societies/parallel jurisdictions, for example Sharia courts, Sharia police and peace judges. 17. States that Pegida opposes gender mainstreaming and political correctness. 18. Indicates that Pegida opposes any radicalism, whether religious or politically motivated. 19. Says that Pegida opposes hate speech, regardless of religion. http://www.menschen-in-dresden.de/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/pegida-positionspapier.pdf (Translation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegida#Political_positions) 2 For decades, even centuries, people have belonged to some kinds of social groups – to a church congregation, to a union, to a clan, to a party, to some kind of community which may have constituted not just a second home but also provided actors who explained the world and society to individuals. These actors may have been priests or union or party leaders or local or regional newspapers. I well remember the lamentations from people who were told by their priests etc. how to vote, and how they complained that they were not free. With many of those ties loosened, people are more “free” than ever in making their choices with respect to their personal lives, but also in terms of the choices of whom they trust, who they vote for. But to what extent are they “free”? People still need sources of information, but more than that, they need communication about how to interpret developments in society, in economics, in politics. Many people turn to diverse and very often contradictory sources of information and actors who provide interpretation. Social media dimension Here we arrive at the social media dimension. In their newly-felt freedom, people turn to very diverse sources of information and actors providing interpretation on the internet. This

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